In this issue:
(To go directly to a story, click on a blue keyword below):

We preview the AZA annual conference hosted by the Fort Worth Zoo, which went wild hiring one of its managers; the Bronx Zoo turns Pattycake into an effective fundraiser; the Oklahoma City Zoo turns its sea lions into artists; and AZA's PR director turns experiences into bad haiku;

Arrow Dynamics' bankruptcy stalls, but business goes on;

Noah's Ark prizes its employees;

Haunted Hacker House turns to sci-fi conventions for talent;

SeaWorld Orlando gets perky with referrals;

Lakemont's GM gets into the kettle corn business;

Paramount's Great Adventure opens its gates to Elvis;

We welcome the Oasis waterpark to Pointe South Mountain Resort, the Scriptorium to the Holy Land Experience, foxes to the Los Angeles Zoo, and miniature golf to Chula Vista Resort;

We tell you how to be among the first to learn of the Golden Ticket results, and we head West for a new home.

For back issues of THE LOOP,
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For a printable version of this column,
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For more information on the facilities and organizations featured in this newsletter, visit our Connections Page.
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X is back on track while Arrow's future looks both up and down. Photo by Eric Minton.

Arrow’s dynamics
Metaphorically speaking, Arrow Dynamics, Inc. fell to the ground with its Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing last winter, but in reality the company continues to move along and, by one measure, is prospering. However, the Clearfield, Utah, company’s future remains in limbo, and thanks to a judge’s ruling last week on a lawsuit from Six Flags, Inc., the company’s crystal ball is muddier than ever.

“It’s going to be a long, drawn-out process unless we can settle with Six Flags,” said Fred Bolingbroke, Arrow’s president and CEO. “Everything we were doing was put on hold until we could get this out of the way.”

Everything pertaining to the company’s Chapter 11 status, he means. Arrow Dynamics has been able to maintain itself via parts sales and retracking older coasters. “Arrow always has had a good parts business,” Bolingbroke said. “We’ve had a better-than-projected spring and summer in parts sales. We knew business would be down because of many factors—the industry is down in general, our bankruptcy, and September 11—and we’ve beat those projections. We’re still down from the prior year, but we’ve done better than we thought we would. That is what’s keeping us alive right now, is parts sales in this industry.”

That and work outside the industry, ranging from redesigning the Olympic cauldron as a permanent fixture in Salt Lake City to designing machine tools. “It’s miscellaneous engineering things to bring money in and keep people busy,” Bolingbroke said of the work his 22 employees are doing. “Nothing high profile.”

Sales of new coasters, meanwhile, press forward. Though no orders have been announced yet, some are in negotiations. “There’s still interest in ArrowBatic,” Bolingbroke said, referring to a single-car inverted coaster that ranges in the $2.5 million to $4 million price range. He said some customers have also shown continued interest in the company’s Virginia Reel spinning coaster, as well as in the Fourth Dimension coaster and Mad Mouse. Despite this interest, closing deals are definitely harder to do, Bolingbroke said. “I think part of it is the industry in general is down, but also some parks are reluctant to consummate an order with a company that’s in Chapter 11.”

And the company currently cannot predict when it can emerge from Chapter 11. In April four companies submitted bids in bankruptcy court to buy Arrow: S&S, Chance Morgan, Conrad Wagner and Six Flags. The last also filed an objection to the sales process, stating it should be entitled to a constructive trust concerning the Fourth Dimension coaster, which opened as X at Six Flags Magic Mountain in December, meaning Six Flags feels it owns all intellectual property concerning the coaster, including drawings and patent. Last week the bankruptcy judge denied Arrow’s request for a summary judgment, requiring the litigants to go through a full discovery process and schedule of hearings. Because of this court action, Arrow has conducted no negotiations with any other firm about mergers or alliances since April, Bolingbroke said.

“There is nothing we can do until we get Six Flags out of the way,” he said. “I can’t say Arrow won’t merge with another company because, ultimately, that might be the best resolution. I think the industry needs fewer, strong companies, not more companies.”

Meanwhile, Arrow and Six Flags worked hand-in-hand to get X restarted after 10 weeks of down time due to a subcontractor’s faulty manufacture of the pickle fork that holds the seats. “Even though we've been in Chapter 11 we've put a lot of resources and time to opening X and worked closely with Six Flags engineers to do that,” Bolingbroke said. “Six Flags has done a good job of getting parts procured quickly and making it a priority for their engineers.”

Further delaying the reopening was Six Flags' insistence that the coaster run two trains, not just one, to meet demand, a decision Bolingbroke wholly supported. “It was disappointing it had to be down for that long, especially right in the middle of the summer,” he said. “The modifications were simple, but there was a long lead time on parts.”

Parts: the boon and bane of Arrow Dynamics' summer of 2002.

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Ark de triumphs
The lifeguards smile. The sweepers say hello. The food servers ask about your day. With due respect to the park that calls itself the “happiest place on earth,” Noah’s Ark Waterpark in the Wisconsin Dells stakes a legitimate claim as fielding the happiest employees on earth. There, employees know that while a smile may not be worth a million bucks, it could be worth a laptop computer, stereo system or mountain trek bike.

When Tim and Dan Gantz took over ownership and management of Noah’s Ark from Jack Waterman in 1994, they inherited an employee appreciation and rewards program that culminated in the giveaway of a Hyundai parked all summer long in the middle of the park. “It worked, so we kept it going,” Tim Gantz said.

But the car was a bit much, they determined; not for them, but for the employees. “We didn’t want to tone it down, but the car had to count as income, and that would mess up their student loans.” So the Gantz’s turned to more palatable prizes with a total worth of $20,000, that appealed especially to the park’s 600 mostly college-age employees, of which about 200 are international students. Individual prizes this year include bicycles, Walkmans, boom boxes, stereo systems, televisions and VCRs. The top employee for the season in each of the company’s six divisions will receive a laptop computer.

The awards are based on points the employees earn throughout the season. The points come from three sources that represent three areas of employee responsibilities. First, park patrons may submit a ballot voting for any “Courteous Arker” they encounter on their visit to the park, a testament to the importance of customer service. Signs around the park explain the program, and Gantz said guests actively participate. Second, each employee votes for a fellow employee, a testament to the role of teamwork. Third, the division managers weigh the number of votes from both patrons and employees and determine a winner by weighing in factors such as performance levels.

The honors are bestowed at an end-of-season party where every employee receives a T-shirt and a crew book to list their colleagues’ addresses, phone numbers and E-mails. “Everybody wins something that night,” Gantz said.

The rewards program is only one of a three-prong employee retention program. Each employee also earns a $1-per-hour bonus for every hour they work payable at the end of the season. “That’s a way to make sure we have enough staff through the season,” Gantz said. “It’s also a disciplinary too, because an employee could lose it. And they can earn it back.” Management also throws a number of parties and employee events, ranging from weekly basketball and grilling parties to organized outings to the cinema, bowling or a pig roast. “We feed them at least twice a week,” Gantz said.

The program, he said, pays off handsomely.“Especially those who have worked a few years here and returned and know they are appreciated.” Of his 200 international student employees alone, on average of 80 return the next year. “When we took over in 1994 we acquired a great facility and a great staff,” Gantz said. They also took over a great program to keep both going strong.

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Cliff Martin (center) leaned on the lovely (trust us) Roger and Tawny Miller (left and right) and Jeff Glatzer for some acting tips. Photo by Eric Minton.

Recruiting space
When Cliff Martin looked for potential fertile ground to recruit actors for his annual Hacker House haunted house in Pilot Mountain, North Carolina, he turned to kindred spirits in weirdness. He turned to science fiction conventions.

“The sci-fi conventions have always appealed to the goth market because they play a lot of role-playing games at these things,” said Martin, president of Myth Adventures which producers Hacker House. For his first stab at sci-fi con recruiting, he put a table and banner in the hall of Shevacon at Roanoke, Virginia, in February. A month later he did the same at Stelarcon in Greensboro, North Carolina, and sent a couple of his actors to hand out brochures and meet one on-one with attendees of Con-Carolina in Charlotte later in the year.

The effort paid off in several applications and three actors on board for this upcoming season. He also explored the possibility of getting some cheap entertainment for the midway he’s adding to Hacker House this year. “We made some contact with Star Wars and Star Trek guys, and I’m trying to get those guys to show up in costume,” Martin said. “I ran into a couple of Ghostbusters and I hope to get them to come up in costume.”

Working the sci-fi conventions served a dual purpose, again because of the likemindedness of the alien fanatics and horror adherents. Martin was able to get his haunt’s name “in front of people,” he said, handing out off-season flyers and promoting his web site which provides the background legend of his themed haunt. “After every convention the hits on the site jumped dramatically,” he said.

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Perking up
The Busch Entertainment Co. has long been assisted by word of mouth to draw guests to its Central Florida theme parks. That word of mouth usually came in the form of recommendations from taxi drivers, bellhops and restaurant wait staff. So, when the company rolled out its new “Hospitality Perks” referral program this year at SeaWorld Orlando and Busch Gardens Tampa, it was offered to anybody working in the hospitality industry, not just tour operators, hotel brokers and concierges.

In Orange County alone, that gives SeaWorld a potential 126,000 sales agents.

“It’s the biggest project of its type we have ever done,” said SeaWorld Publicist Cara Allen. “We’ve done incentive programs in the past where we targeted customer service workers at hotels. We’ve expanded that to anybody in the tourism industry because we realized everyone has the ability to be a sales agent for SeaWorld.”

To entice these tourism workers, Busch is awarding points to any guest that passes through the theme park gates via a referral. These points can be redeemed for such merchandise as pens (25 points), park admissions (50 points), DVD players (200 points) and all-inclusive packages for two at SeaWorld’s Discovery Cove (500 points). These rewards come on top of a single day admission to SeaWorld or Busch Gardens just for registering.

Hospitality workers who sign up for free membership in the program receive a packet with referral cards coded to their own personal accounts. The workers can then track their accumulated points via a web site and a personalized newsletter. To help ensure guests use the referral cards, the parks are running a sweepstakes based on returned referral cards.

The new program caught fire when it was introduced in early June; more than 500 people signed up after just the first three orientation sessions, Allen said. To date membership in the program numbers 4,927, she said, with an average of 500 new enrollees signing up per week. People are earning their rewards, too: six people have 600 points, the highest level.

“These people have been referring people all along,” Allen said. “Now we are rewarding them as well.”

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The Kumpfs bagged a profit putting a concession stand in their own park. Photo by Eric Minton

Seed money
If the new Kettle Korn concessionaire at Lakemont Park in Altoona, Pennsylvania, runs afoul of park General Manager Barry Kumpf’s quality control standards, he will only have himself to blame. Kumpf has hired himself, along with his wife, Joyce, as the new food concession at his park.

“I just want to try to make a buck to get the kids’ college fund started,” Kumpf said, referring to daughter Courtney, 9, and son Cory, 4. Last year Kumpf contracted a kettle corn vendor for a couple of events and watched the sweet-tasting popcorn net about $10,000. Figuring he could purchase the equipment for half that, he and Joyce decided to moonlight as kettle korn operators at his own park, calling the stand Courtney & Cory’s Country Kettle Korn.

“He’s in management,” Joyce said of the stand’s youngest namesake. Meanwhile, Courtney contributes by making sales pitches to passing pedestrians. Though Barry calls Joyce his "Kettle Korn Queen," she hired some help to run the stand. “I’ll do weekends and busy days,” she said.

Barry said he called a couple other parks to hear their report on Kettle Korn operations. “They said it was a wonderful thing, that if you can get somebody to cook it, you’ll be in great shape.” That forecast proved accurate. "We were real happy with it," he said. "We paid all the bills and had some money left over."

Before moving forward, however, Barry called Lakemont owner Ralph Albarano. “I wanted him to have the opportunity to have input, to make sure he didn’t see a conflict of interest,” said Kumpf, who has been the park’s general manager since 1993. “But the way I see it, if I have a business in here, I’m much more interested in bringing in more people.”

Barry said his second call went to Dave Stone of Boston Concession, the company which runs the rest of Lakemont’s food operations. Not only did he get Stone’s blessing—“We anointed the stand with popcorn oil,” Stone said—but Boston Concession staff helped the Kumpfs unload the half ton of popcorn and half ton of sugar from the truck.

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There can be only one Elvis in history, though many tried at Paramount's Great America. Photo courtesy of Paramount's Great America.

Kings for a day
In the weeks surrounding the 25th anniversary of Elvis Presley’s August 17 death the King seemed to be everywhere, even, amazingly, on Top 40 radio playlists. Guests at Paramount’s Great America in Santa Clara, California, that Saturday truly were sighting Elvis everywhere during an all-day Elvis tribute, including free admission to anybody dressed as Elvis.

“You had to look like Elvis from head to toe,” said Timothy Chanaud, the park’s manager of communications. “You couldn’t just have a pair of glasses. You needed the jumpsuit and the sideburns and the glasses. You needed more than just a pair of blue suede shoes.”

He did not know how many Elvises entered the park, but he said there were a “large number,” including a family of four from Chico, California, all dressed as Elvis: mom, dad and the two kids. “Most of the impersonators were late Elvis, the Vegas sequined jumpsuit Elvis,” Chanaud said. “There were a number of people who clearly made their own costumes.”

The day’s events included an Elvis-only karaoke contest featuring four impersonators. The winner, Hector Lucido of Stockton, California, won the privilege of performing as the opening act for that evening’s Mike Albert “Ultimate Tribute” concert, an Elvis impersonator show that attracted an audience of 1,500 people, Chanaud said.

The promotion not only generated press coverage on every local television station, including two morning shows broadcasting live from the park, it also gave members of the Paramount’s Great Adventure staff a chance to dress up as Elvis. “It was definitely one of the more fun promotions we’ve done,” Chanaud said.

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Return Visit
Our story in the last issue of THE LOOP (August 9, 2002) about the weight guessers' reunion at Cedar Point prompted a note from a reader at Sesame Place in Langhorne, Pennsylvania. She pointed out that many parks have alumni pages on their web sites, "but it would be really cool to have a general alumni site for theme parks like classmates.com. This way ideas could be shared and resources pooled perhaps."

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Eric's Turn
& Turn Again

Gold rush
About a month ago on the Frommer’s web site’s bulletin board, a woman posted a query. She was interested in visiting amusement parks; which one was the best? Within a couple of hours, 17 people had posted suggestions. One said Universal Studio’s Islands of Adventure, one suggested Disney World, and a couple nominated Busch Gardens. The rest told her to visit Cedar Point.

Most focused on Cedar Point's variety of rides and collection of coasters. Many also praised the park for the way it treats customers, from friendly staff to clean grounds and efficient operations. The overriding theme to these comments: value. Cedar Point not only was worth the money these people spent there, but worth the time they spent there.

This being an Internet bulletin board, we can’t be sure all those respondents were not somehow employed by Cedar Fair, though they did give their names and cities. However, Cedar Point regularly tops a much more legitimate poll, Amusement Today’s annual Golden Ticket Awards.

Based on hundreds of surveys turned in by amusement park enthusiasts and weighted so that more populated geographic areas cannot skewer the results, the Golden Ticket has in its four-year history gained such stature that one park publicist calls it the amusement industry’s version of the Academy Awards.

Parks proudly post their status as a Golden Ticket winner at their front gates, and other park operators gnash their teeth when they learn their own coaster slipped a notch from the previous year. Holiday World & Splashin’ Safari even engaged in a capital expenditure over the past off-season—changing trains on the Legend roller coaster—in part to try to rise up in the Golden Ticket’s wood coaster standings. That's money well spent because Holiday World uses its Golden Ticket ratings—topping last year's wood coaster poll with The Raven—in its marketing campaigns (THE LOOP, October 19, 2001).

This year’s Golden Ticket awards will be announced on Monday, August 26, in a ceremony at Paramount’s Kings Island near Cincinnati, Ohio. Why there? You’ll have to tune in to find out. As the ceremony unfolds at 1 p.m. (13,00) Eastern time, we will post all the results on www.amusementtoday.com at the same time. That’s noon for you folks in Dallas, 10 a.m. in California, 6 p.m. in London, 8 p.m. in Mecca and 2 a.m. Tuesday in Sydney. Log on and find out how Cedar Point and all the other great parks around the world measure up among the people who love parks most.

Go West, young LOOP
Twice this month I have traced the path of U.S. Highway 66, the United States’ most famous highway. America’s first transcontinental road, it enabled the Okies to escape the Dust Bowl of the ’30s, assisted a nation mobilizing for war in the ’40s, and provided an avenue for vacationers in the ’50s and ’60s. It has since almost disappeared with the advent of the interstate highway system.

Route 66 played an integral part in the development of our industry, too. The opening of Disneyland in 1955 made Southern California the family vacation destination of choice. Over the subsequent 10 years, regarded as 66's heyday, millions of moms, dads and kids packed into their cars with luggage peaked high on rooftop racks to traverse the fable highway. One entrepreneur sought to get a little of the theme park action himself by enticing Disney-bound and homeward-bound vacationers to stop at his park in Oklahoma City. That theme park, Frontier City, eventually launched Premier Parks which is now the Six Flags chain.

The purposes of my successive journeys West is due to a change of residency. Sarah’s full-time job has required her to transfer to Tuscon, Arizona, and we are moving THE LOOP's operations there from Dayton, Ohio. This LOOP is coming to you from Albuquerque, New Mexico, my penultimate stop on my way to our new home.

True to the tradition of the now-lost highway—and true to my job—on this trip I've stopped in at some modern pieces of Americana: Holiday World & Splashin Safari in Santa Claus, Indiana; The Tracks and Silver Dollar City in Branson, Missouri; the Oklahoma City Zoo in Oklahoma; Wonderland Amusement Park in Abilene, Texas; and Cliff’s Amusement Park here in Albuquerque. My thanks to all my gracious hosts who not only let me enjoy their facilities but allowed me to park my fully loaded car in secure areas.

Yes, we now need to send all you park operators and suppliers a change of address; or, you can go ahead and E-mail me at eric@gettheloop.com and we will send you our new contact information immediately. Our toll-free phone number, 888-902-5667, will remain the same. And, though we will be coming to you from a new location, the product stays the same. If not better.

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AZA Preview

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Going Wild in Texas
The last time we were all together in one room, the World Trade Center was a smoldering heap of debris, floodlights were trained on the Pentagon's gaping wound and the world sat stunned still, trying to comprehend what had happened that September 11 morning. For the people attending the American Zoo and Aquarium Association annual conference in St. Louis, the immediate task was merely getting home and the conference was cut short.

For this year's AZA conference hosted by the Fort Worth Zoo in Texas September 10-14 the organizers plan to conduct a memorial service and tribute as part of the Wednesday morning Opening Session. "We are going to address the fact that the last time we were all together as a group was September 11," said Marnie Ducato, conference coordinator. "But we'll try to end it on a positive note." Or, as Lyndsay Nantz, the zoo's communications manger put it, "we don't want to bring down the entire conference with what happened last year. We want to move forward with a positive attitude."

So, look for a wild time in Texas: and we don't just mean the Texas Wild! exhibit at the Fort Worth Zoo, which will be the must-see element of Friday's Zoo Day (among the tours available to AZA members on zoo day will be a few behind-the-scenes tour of the $40 million, immersively themed, multimedia exhibit). As of this week more than 1,300 delegates have registered, and organizers are anticipating up to 1,700 will attend, stellar numbers in an economy when many government entities are restricting travel for budgetary purposes. In the exhibit hall, 135 vendors are slated to show their wares and services (for a list of those vendors, click here).

The annual Icebreaker on the eve of the Opening Session will be at Billy Bob's Texas with a live band and dancing, and two nights later conference organizers more or less formalized an AZA tradition: the Pub Crawl at Sundance Square, with some 15 bars and nightclubs offering delegates free drinks and food. T-shirts listing all the stops will be available for sale, with proceeds going to the AZA Conservation Endowment Foundation. "It's an organized event, but people can go off and do it at their own speed and go with a group of friends," Ducato said.

In addition to the traditional Icebreaker the Forth Worth organizers have scheduled a Pre Icebreaker Monday night, too. "Because we have a lot of meetings before the Opening Ceremonies we decided to do something early, for people who come in and do the meetings and then have to leave," Ducato said. "We thought it would be nice to do something for them." Other new developments for this year's conference: the business meeting on Thursday morning is open to all delegates, and as part of the Fort Worth Zoo's campaign to get local companies to help finance the conference, sponsors will be offering roundtable sessions and presentations at the zoo on Friday.

Conservation will be the overriding theme of this year's conference, titled "Wild challenges, sustainable solutions." Coming into this convention most delegates will be more concerned with the bushmeat crisis in Africa than the specter of 9/11 hanging over the conference (see story below). Peter Emerson of the Environmental Defense Fund will be the Opening Session's keynote speaker, setting the tone for a series of workshop topics dealing with conservation efforts and zoos partnering with various organizations and campaigns. Speaking of campaigns, another key effort at this year's conference will be the full fusing of Aza, the conservation-conscience mascot (THE LOOP, March 8, 2002), with all of AZA's programs.

As usual the conference will have a full slate of professional development workshops and roundtables hitting on all aspects of zoo operations. Then there are the off-the-wall topics, like Thursday afternoon's "Mystery, Sex, Teddy Bears, You Better Run—How a variety of events support our mission."

"I wanted to put together a session on unusual special events that don't fit the norm or the usual holidays, those things that allow us to partner with organizations we don't normally partner with, those things that attract a new audience who doesn't normally come to the zoo," said moderator Patty Peters, associate zoo director/marketing at the Columbus Zoo in Ohio. She has tied animal mating behavior in with a Valentine promotion at her zoo; that would be the "Sex" part of her workshop. The session will highlight mystery dinner theaters, races for runners and medical clinics for teddy bears. The last was an event at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs, Colorado, featured in THE LOOP (August 10, 2001).

Being the marketing expert she is, Peters knows that content alone won't draw an audience. "The only way to put people in your sessions is to put some odd title on it," she said. "That one came to me in a dream."

These will be wild times indeed.

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When Burgess came aboard, the Fort Worth Zoo was pointing in a new direction with Texas Wild! Photo by Eric Minton.

Attraction on the job
It is not that Bryan Burgess is lonely. It's just that he's pretty much alone in his field as the attractions manager for the Fort Worth Zoo. His job is to oversee a 39-person division with the sole purpose of operating the zoo's rides and attractions, and in that role he has few peers among zoos.

He has plenty among amusement parks, though, which is where he got his start. He worked for six years at Six Flags Over Texas in Arlington, three of those years in ride operations and three as a supervisor in ride operations and park services. With little chance of advancement beyond his seasonal status at the Six Flags park, he moved over to the Fort Worth Zoo, working in operations for 2 1/2 years. In September 2000, as the zoo was developing its Texas Wild! exhibit, which includes a train, carousel, play barn, arcade, theater and the Wild Weather Extravaganza multimedia show, Burgess was made attractions manager where, in addition to the Texas Wild! attractions, he takes care of the Tasmanian Tower rock climbing wall and coin-op rides.

“Most zoos lump (attractions) in with the customer service department,” Burgess said. “For training purposes we have a huge advantage here. We can concentrate on the safety and efficiency of the rides. We spend an unbelievable amount of time focusing on safety, which I picked up at Six Flags.”

For networking purposes he calls on his amusement park colleagues to help him with operational issues. He believes that, in time, more zoos will be adding amusement park elements, and he will have colleagues in his own industry who not only must deal with such ride-specific issues as capacity, throughputs and parts but also such zoo-specific issues as limited capital, funding resources and upcharges.

While he thinks more zoos will incorporate amusements and attractions into their offerings—“I hope we move in that direction,” he said— he does not see zoos abandoning their current personalities. “There is probably a line. You probably wouldn’t see a roller coaster go a hundred miles an hour and up 300 feet in zoos. There will be a distinct line.”

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Lemon aide
When it comes to taking on an international conservation mission, the Bronx Zoo in New York City has found that using a celebrity with a catchy name and a familial connection to the crisis is the best way to raise awareness and achieve a monetary goal.

Begun July 9, “The Pattycake Fund” aimed to raise $250,000 by the end of this month, all the money going to combat the bushmeat crisis in Africa where poachers are illegally hunting gorillas for food. The fund is named for Pattycake, the first gorilla born in New York City 30 years ago who gained much more celebrity in her hometown by giving birth to nine babies, including twins in 1994, thereby becoming the subject of an FAO Schwarz plush doll three years ago.

The fund raiser worked on several levels. Pattycake’s home, the Congo Gorilla Forest opened at the zoo in 1999, charges a $3 admission fee, and at the end of the exhibit guests may vote to earmark their admission to one of four conservation efforts—western gorillas, okapi, mandrills or other wildlife. All the money voted for gorillas, annually the most popular vote getter, went into The Pattycake Fund during the campaign. Meanwhile, a pop-up window on the zoo’s web site caught the attention of New York philanthropist Robert W. Wilson, who offered a dollar-for-dollar matching grant for all money raised by The Pattycake Fund.

Signs around the zoo promoting The Pattycake Fund garnered even more awareness, specifically catching the attention of three girls from Mamaroneck, Connecticut, who were visiting the zoo on a school trip. “We saw the gorillas and read about the way their habitat was being destroyed,” the two 9 1/2-year-old friends and a 5 1/2-year-old sister wrote in a letter to the zoo. “We decided to sell lemonade to help save the rainforest and the gorillas. We made as much money as we could. Some people didn’t even want lemonade, they just donated money. The amount came to $30.50. Please use this for the Pattycake Fund.”

That went toward the $114,000 raised through last weekend which, with Wilson’s matching grant, brought the total to a goal-clearing $228,000. However, the fund has been extended to the end of September, a month which will kick off with a Pattycake birthday bash (she was born on September 3), that will include birthday cake and favors, face painting, an African dance company and the announcement of the name for Pattycake’s latest offspring, born on February 4, 2001. The baby's name was chosen through a New York Daily New reader contest—the same way Pattycake got her name 30 years ago, a name which now resonates with her imperiled kin in Africa.

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Midge made an impression on Bledsoe's canvas and her own rockwork home. Photo by Eric Minton.

The sea lion says, 'Art! Art! Art!'
For our special AZA edition of THE LOOP last year we posted the first-ever cyber art gallery of paintings by animals at several North American zoos. The gallery features works by pachyderms, porpoises, penguins, pigs and a rhinoceros.

This year we recall that special art show with contributions from two California sea lions at the Oklahoma City Zoo in Oklahoma. Sixteen-year-old Moe and 17-year-old Midge have been painting canvases since March, though trainers Laura Bottaro and Julie Bledsoe began teaching the behavior in January.

"We just thought it would be a new and interesting training behavior for them," Bottaro said. "When we decided to do it we thought it was important that at least half the money made from their paintings go toward a rehab center," specifically the San Pedro Marine Mammal Care Center in California. Bottaro said she had taught a sea lion to paint when she worked at Sea Life Park in Hawaii before coming to the Oklahoma City Zoo. The Oklahoma City sea lions do painting sessions "randomly, very randomly," Bottaro said, usually scheduling them no more than once a month.

The behavior is simple. The trainers get the sea lions to target on a canvas, hand them a brush dipped in tempera non-toxic paint and let them apply strokes of their fancy. Because sea lions are color blind, all they care about is the flow of strokes. Moe, as shy and reserved as sea lions come, was slow to take up his art. "He's a big chicken," Bledsoe said. When he finally started painting, he tended to merely blot splotches of paint on the canvas, though now he does works of timid and sparse strokes.

Midge is all over the canvas with her brush. "She has so much energy, and painting helps release that," Bledsoe said. In fact, in some painting sessions she is so all over the canvas that paint ends up all over her and her habitat. "We're going to have a very colorful exhibit one of these days," Bledsoe said of the paint spattering on the rock structures.

Below is a sample of Midge's artistry, and by clicking your cursor on the painting you will go to our cyber art gallery featuring THE Loop's full catalog of animal art.

To visit THE LOOP Art Gallery, click here

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Well, versed
Some people dabble in poetry. Jane Ballentine, director of public affairs at the AZA, pretty much dribbles it. Her medium of choice is haiku, and though she doesn’t consider herself a particularly good poet—“Haiku is the only kind of poetry I could ever decently write,” she said—her efforts have won her two literary prizes: first place in a USA Today contest and third in that august journal of literature, Chesapeake Light Craft Boats, a newsletter for boat building hobbyists.

The term “literary prizes” is a relative term here because the latter was her entry in a bad poetry contest. Her composition, “How I Learned to Love Sanding,” follows:

Paddling the seas
First must build the kayak new
Sanding is a sad time.

“I was convinced it was very bad, so it would be no blow to my ego to win a bad poetry contest,” she said. She won a T-shirt for her entry, in addition to lingering respect among the newsletter staff who have reprinted her verse in a feature on proper sanding techniques and apparently repeat the last line as a mantra around the publication’s offices.

She encountered the USATODAY.com daily haiku contest on line, and she jumped at the April 6, 2001, topic, “My First Concert.” “Considering my first concert was Captain and Tennille, I thought I had a pretty good shot,” she said. She won her prize, a hat, for this masterpiece:

Captain and Tennille
12-year-old in front row sings
About love, Muskrats

Haiku is a creative stress-release for the busy PR expert. “It usually happens when I don’t have any free time. I’m so stressed about work and don’t know which project to do next, so I’ll write a haiku and then move on to the next task.” She also enjoys reading haiku volumes and can only dream of someday being considered legitimately publishable. “Good haiku? I’m not sure I’m capable of that level of depth,” she said.

Still Ballentine is “striving for that silver medal.” Referring to her T-shirt and hat prizes, she said, “All I need is a pair of shorts and I could go out in an award-winning outfit.”

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New Arrivals

It’s a waterpark!
Pointe South Mountain Resort in Phoenix, Arizona, announces the arrival of The Oasis, August 22, 2002. Measurements: six acres (2.4 hectares), three body slides off an 83-foot tower (25 meters), 10,000-square-foot wave pool (929 square meters), 950-foot-long (290-meter-long) and 12-foot-wide (3.6-meter-wide) active river, 800-square-foot (74 square meter) toddler pool with interactive elements, 25-person hot tub, one restaurant and one gift shop. Delivered by EDSA Cloward, Kitchell Contractors, Rock and Waterscape, Synectic Design, Vanasse Hangen Brustlin and Whitewater West.

For a 15-year-old resort embarking on a major overhaul of amenities starting with the $12.3 million Oasis waterpark, the opening night crowd could not have been better selected. Some 750 Medtronics salesmen and women were on hand to inaugurate the new waterpark. Ranging in age from young 30s to late 50s, they swarmed over the three thrill slides and filled the action river with screams of laughter.

“It’s like a bunch of arrested-development kids,” said Ron Olstad, managing director of Pointe South Mountain Resort. “We’re feeding them and drinking them and they’re entertaining themselves. We have a steel drum band and a few moon globes, and the rest is in their hands.” At the time Olstad was speaking, the 7 to 10:30 p.m. (19,00 to 22,30) exclusive party had just reached its midpoint.“They’re just cranking up,” he said.

Though just hours old—and, for that matter, just a few hours after the park earned its certificate of occupancy—this was a promising start to a waterpark meant to appeal to groups and an older demographic than do most waterparks. “We really wanted a private water adventure that would be sophisticated enough for adults, because we do so much group business, and still be exciting for families with youngsters,” Olstad said.

That accounts for the high thrill slides and an action river with “more bells and whistles to make it unusual,” including bubblers, misters, arching water streams, jets speeding up the current and a whirlpool that creates an eddy effect. Banking the river are rocks to create the sensation that you are floating through a canyon. The river surrounds an island with grass area and a fire pit, again catering to group business. Alongside the wave pool is a sports pool with water volleyball and basketball, and both pools will provide “theater seating” for dive-in movies, thanks to a 20-by-20-foot (6-by-6-meter) movie screen Oasis will be able to erect on piers behind the wave pool.

The waterpark will be available to guests of the 640-room resort, plus the resort's 1,500 health club members and 450 tennis club members. Nevertheless, Olstad is counting on his new waterpark to garner a lot of attention. “This is a 15-year-old resort that is ensuring we not only stay competitive but try to advance our advantages,” he said. “We’re definitely scoring a coup with this. We absolutely will have the best water feature of any private resort environment in the Southwest.”

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It’s a Bible gallery!
The Holy Land Experience in Orlando, Florida, announces the arrival of The Scriptorium—Center for Biblical Antiquities, August 19, 2002. Measurements: 17,000 square feet (1,579 square meters), 12 galleries, 75 items on display of almost 1,100 in the collection. Delivered by Fourth Phase, ITEC Productions, Jack Jennings & Sons, Sparks Exhibits and Visible Sound.

When he opened the Holy Land Experience in February, 2001, an actor-filled representation of Jesus Christ’s homeland, Marvin Rosenthal, executive director of Zion’s Hope and the theme park’s owner, intimated that the park’s crown jewel was yet to come.

It has come. The Scriptorium serves as a repository and museum of rare bibles, including artifacts from the Van Kampen Collection. On display are clay cuneiform tablets, papyrus scrolls, illuminated parchment manuscripts, hand-copied bibles and a fragment of the Gutenberg Bible. However, true to modern Orlando theme park presentations, the Scriptorium is more of a walk-through experience than a museum, as groups of guests are prompted from scene to scene via visual and audio cues. Produced by ITEC Productions, which also produced the Holy Land Experience, each Scriptorium scene showcases various artifacts with technological effects and animatronics.

After a two-week soft opening period to work out the kinks in timing—“It is a unique flow, trying to take groups of 12 to 15 people and stagger them through the facility,” said Bill Coan, a partner at ITEC—the Scriptorium was previewed for the press last Thursday and opened to invited guests Friday and Saturday evening. On Monday, Rosenthal hosted a Bible study conference at his Holy Land Experience complex and allowed those 500 participants to be the first public patrons to pass through the new Scriptorium.

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It’s a fox exhibit!
The Los Angeles Zoo announces the arrival of a new fox exhibit August 15, 2002. Measurements: 1,600 square feet (149 square meters), three exhibits, three species of foxes.

The long-term makeover of the Los Angeles Zoo from mid-60s cutting edge exhibitry to 21st century themed living areas continues as the zoo unveiled its second renovated roundhouse (the first was made over for komodos, THE LOOP, October 19, 2001). With a living area appropriate to the animals’ native habitats and background murals to match, two foxes made their debuts at the zoo: the bat-eared fox, returning to Los Angeles after a five-year absence, and Channel Island foxes. The third species, the red fox, was already an L.A. Zoo residents.

The Channel Island foxes are the cornerstone of the new exhibit. Indigenous to the islands off the southern California coast, these varieties are a threatened species, and the Los Angeles Zoo has obtained a breeding pair. For the occasion of the exhibit’s official opening, the zoo only staged a media day, attended by 12 representatives of local media outlets. “We had more come out for this than some of our major openings,” said the zoo’s Public Relations Manager Judy Shay. “I guess they wanted to see the foxes.”

While the bat-eared foxes stayed in hiding during their coming out party, their Channel Island cousins ate up the attention, posing for cameras at the front of the exhibit. Well, they are natives to the area and perhaps used to the show biz lifestyle.

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Chula Vista took away their guests' beloved golf course, but gave back a new and improved version. Photo courtesy of Chula Vista Resort.

It’s a mini-golf course!
Chula Vista Resort in the Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin, announces the arrival of Superstition Springs Mini-Golf, August 1, 2002. Measurements: 18 holes, 700 yards of concrete, 20,000 gallons of water. Delivered by Jeff Dillon Consulting.

Chula Vista opened its new miniature golf course to its guests around dinner time on July 19. That Friday evening the course’s theme could best be described as “unfinished.” Lacking was the landscape, the water, the facades on the many Texan-Mexican structures and the animation incorporated into those structures. Lacking, too, were a few holes.

“It won’t be finished,” resort president and course builder Mike Kaminski said that morning even as workers were still laying the carpets. “But it will open tonight. Guests are demanding it.”

Chula Vista is the rare resort, even in the amusement-rich market of the Dells, that has its own miniature golf course. The original dated back to the 1950s, and Kaminski was caught between a rock and a hard place—literally, you could say in this case—in replacing it. “Lots of people played that old broken down miniature golf course,” he said. “We wanted to give them something of more value.”

To do so, though, he had no golf to offer while constructing the new, fully themed course. "Once you have (a miniature golf course), you cannot get rid of it," said Patti Fichter, the resort's director of marketing and guest services. "We took out the tennis court and didn't get boo about it. The minute we took away mini golf, they demanded we put it back in." Thus, once the playing surfaces were ready, the course opened, and the frills were finished in the meantime. Most of the theming was completed within a week, and by the end of the month all 18 holes were in play.

Playing the course is an additional charge, even for resort guests. That extra charge, however, is not an issue for guests who want their mini golf. Fichter said the course's most popular use is in the early evenings after dinner. Kaminski further supplemented the course’s themed attributes with glow-in-the-dark golfing every night from 9:30 p.m. to midnight (21,30 to 24,00). With the course dimly lit in low voltage lighting, players use clear balls containing miniature glow sticks that they can then keep as souvenirs.

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